Help Desk Newsletter – May

Welcome to our iSchool Help Desk monthly newsletter!! We use this to share updates about what we’ve been up to. Whether you’re a current student, faculty, or staff; or maybe even an alumni or friend of the iSchool Help Desk and want to keep in-the-know about us, we’re glad to have you! You can expect updates about the major initiatives and projects we are working on, pictures and updates from our fun social events, and anything else up and coming at the iSchool Help Desk!

Accessibility Advocate Shoutouts

We have been helping support the iSchool as they work towards more accessible class materials to meet changing federal standards. We would like to celebrate those who have been stepping up to become Accessibility Advocates at the iSchool – whether they have been educating others about accessibility for years, or they’ve recently made the commitment to jump in and try their best, we think it’s important to recognize the effort and amazing impact that we can make as an iSchool community if we all do our part!

In March, we began spotlighting some of these advocates on a monthly basis. This is a great chance to recognize and uplift these efforts, to encourage one another as a community to keep striving, and to help students get to know our instructors a little better! Please check out our shoutout from May, professor Melissa Wong! Feel free to email us at ischool-support@illinois.edu to nominate any instructors and let us know their impact!

Check out the blog post here!

Black background with a spotlight, and a headshot of Melissa Wong in the center. It says “Melissa Wong” at the top and “May ’25” at the bottom.

Exciting Life Updates

We are excited to announce that our newly-graduated GA Wanheng has accepted a job as the Asian Studies Librarian at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. She is excited to work just a couple of doors down from our other former help-desker Audrey. We know she will be an amazing addition to their team!

Our other recently-graduated GA Delia, who is still around at the Help Desk for part of the summer, has recently finished a wonderful project for the city of Bloomington. Working with the group Strong Towns Blono, Delia was chosen to create murals that lead from the Bloomington Public Library to the McLean County Museum of History. Here are a few photos of the beautiful murals she created, honoring the circus history of Bloomington while aiding pedestrians with wayfinding. We are so proud of her and this project! Check out a news spotlight about the mural project.

Collage of photos of sidewalk mural art. In the first photo, Help Desk GA Delia sits on a sidewalk and paints part of a mural. Second photo: sidewalk mural in which a ballerina with blue skin sits atop a pink circus elephant. Third photo: sidewalk mural in which an aerial dancer with pink skin hangs upside down from blue ribbons. Fourth photo: sidewalk mural in which a line of blue rabbits jumping down the sidewalk and one blue rabbit is peeking out from inside a blue top hat.

Graduation & Farewells

We are very proud of our five Help Desk GAs who have graduated this May and are moving on to the next big step in their lives! We are so sad to let them go, but we know they are all going to do amazing things. You can check out our blog and Facebook to see some farewell posts for each of them.

We are also very proud of two of our graduated GA’s who received special iSchool student awards at graduation. Delia received the Herbert Goldhor Award for Public Librarianship and Audrey received the Downs Faculty Special Award of Merit. We are so glad that their wonderful leadership, creativity, and contributions to the iSchool community have been recognized!

Five Help Desk GAs sitting on a couch and smiling together. Left to right: Victoria (MSLIS ’25 graduate) in her gown and hood; Britany; Maggie; Wanheng (MSLIS ’25 graduate) in gown and hood and holding her cap; Elliot.

iSchool Resource Zine

Our wonderful, recently graduated Help Desker Delia has been working very hard this past year to create a beautiful new resource for the iSchool community, and we are so excited to announce that these zines are now available at the Help Desk! Check out our new iSchool Resource Guide zines, which you can currently find on our community shelf near the Help Desk at 614 E Daniel. Including beautiful, one-of-a-kind illustrations, this zine is a great guide to the iSchool as well as other important campus and off-campus resources for students. Feel free to take one, share them, and/or bring your own zines for the zine shelf!

Small Zine that reads “Welcome to the iSchool future librarians! A resource guide for students in Information Sciences. Written and Illustrated by Delia Kerr-Dennhardt. Sponsored by the ALA & QLA in collaboration with the Help Desk.” There is an illustration of six Help Desk GAs depicted as various cute animals, reading books and hanging out.

A shelf with a sign that reads “Zine Library. Feel free to take, make, and donate your own zines!”. On the shelf is a collection of iSchool Resource zines and other small zines.

Upcoming…

Thank you so much for reading our newsletter, and for all of your support! We are excited to be able to keep everyone updated on the fun things happening at the Help Desk and in our community. Keep an eye out for next month’s newsletter!

Most of the current/newly graduated Help Desk GAs posing behind the Help Desk with paper hearts, one party hat, and smiles. Left to right: Victoria, Mohammed, Daniel (his face is covered), Maggie, Kyleigh, Delia, Audrey, Britany, Elliot, and Gates.

Help Desk Newsletter- April

Accessibility Advocate Shoutouts

In March, we began spotlighting some of these advocates on a monthly basis. This is a great chance to recognize and uplift these efforts, to encourage one another as a community to keep striving, and to help students get to know our instructors a little better! Please check out our shoutout from April, lecturer Craig Evans, and keep an eye out for our last Advocate of this semester to be shared later in the week! Feel free to email us at ischool-support@illinois.edu to nominate any instructors and let us know their impact!

Check out the blog post here!

Black background with a spotlight, and a headshot of Craig Evans in the center. It says “Craig Evans” at the top and “April ’25” at the bottom.

Help Desk Social Event- Game Night

We had another successful Help Desk social event, a game night! We enjoyed snacks and some fun board and video games as a group, including Quiplash, as you can see below.

Quiplash prompt on a TV screen that reads “You need three things to live: food, water, and [blank]”. The answers below read “Spite” and “Federal Grants”. Beneath them it reads “Pick your favorite on your device now!”.

Exciting Life Updates!

We have several exciting life updates as our GAs continue to search for jobs, prepare to graduate or to train our incoming GAs in August, and more!

Help Desk GA Audrey has accepted a position as the Librarian for Creative and Instructional Technologies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee!! She is very excited to be starting this position in July! We will be lost without her, but we’re so excited to see her take her amazing skills and positive personality and use them to succeed.

Help Desk GA Victoria has accepted a position as Research and Learning Librarian & Assistant Professor at Stetson University in Florida!! She will be starting in June. We are going to miss her warm presence so much, but we know that no one is more qualified than her and she will do an amazing job wherever she is!

First-year GA Elliot is also very excited to share that they have recently gotten engaged and will be married in October!

We hope you will keep on cheering on our GAs who are about to graduate and looking to find their next steps! We know they’ll all do great, and we all appreciate how supportive our community is.

April Fools Day

As per tradition, the Help Desk partook in many April Fools Day shenanigans. For the day, we became the Psychic Help Desk – offering cootie catchers to tell your fortune, tarot readings by absolute amateurs, and lots of fun graphics on our signs. Check out just a few of them below! Thanks to everyone who entertained our silly endeavors.

Graphic that reads “Psychic Readings Presented by the Help Desk” at the top. It lists the Zodiac signs and various silly, made-up readings or advice for each one.

Graphic with a meme on it. The meme includes a man with his partner. The man has been labelled “my anxiety” and is looking away from his partner, who’s labelled “calling the Help Desk on the phone” and towards a woman who is labelled “using tech chat”. Underneath the meme the graphic reads “Getting assistance with tech service needs? More likely than you think…”.

Graphic that reads “it looks like you emailed the help desk- do you need help?” with an image of Clippy next to it. At the bottom it reads “Spread messages of love and support on this special occasion”.

Hygiene items in bathrooms

While this is not directly Help Desk related (although we like to think we had a hand in pushing for this to get done), after months of waiting, the bathrooms in our building on the 4th floor now have hygiene supplies in them! We are excited for this building to be just a little bit more inclusive and accessible. Thank you to our awesome Facilities team!

Plastic receptacle holding pads and tampons on a bathroom wall. Taken in one of the gender-neutral bathrooms in the new iSchool building.

Help Desk Menu

Lately, we have had several creative presentations given at our Team Meetings. If you’ve ever wondered what sort of coffee shop drink one of us Help Desk-ers most embodies, or if you’re curious to get to know us a little better, this presentation about the “Help Desk Menu” by Elliot might be of interest to you. Maybe you will even be motivated to try out one of the Help Desk-er inspired drinks!

Upcoming…

Most of the current Help Desk GAs posing behind the Help Desk with paper hearts, one party hat, and smiles. Left to right: Victoria, Mohammed, Daniel (his face is covered), Maggie, Kyleigh, Delia, Audrey, Britany, Elliot, and Gates.

Help Desk Newsletter- March

Welcome to our NEW iSchool Help Desk monthly newsletter!! We will be using this to share updates about what we’ve been up to. Whether you’re a current student, faculty, or staff; or an alumni or friend of the iSchool Help Desk and want to keep in-the-know about us, we’re glad to have you! You can expect updates about the major initiatives and projects we are working on, pictures and updates from our fun social events, and anything else up and coming at the iSchool Help Desk!

Digital Accessibility

One of our biggest undertakings this semester has been to provide resources and support for the iSchool as it begins working to meet upcoming new federal accessibility standards. You can learn more about how the U of I is preparing for digital accessibility compliance here. Updating all course materials to meet these standards by April of next year is a big task, and we’re working in many different ways to provide support.

Our GAs have created workshops for faculty and Teaching Assistants about topics such as PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, and Canvas accessibility practices and tools. We are currently working on adapting these and recording them as videos so that these trainings can be taken on instructors own schedules. We are also working to create short videos about specific common accessibility issues and how to remedy them, as well as important tools that can be used while updating materials to be more accessible!

Keep an eye out for these materials, and feel free to reach out to us with any questions. We’re always happy to help!

March Madness- Battle of the Books!

For our own version of March Madness, we had a bracket-style battle of the book genres! Starting with 16 genres (fiction and non-fiction), we had the iSchool vote for their favorite literary genres at the Help Desk each week to narrow them down.

Book Genre Bracket at the Help Desk. There is a container with drawers that are labelled with different genres to place votes in, and a paper underneath showing the different genres that are facing off with each other.

And we finally have a winner! Drumroll……

Comics!!! Enjoy a picture of our display celebrating the iSchool’s chosen favorite genre! Thank you so much to everyone who passionately participated every week, had good-natured debates, and shared your voices with us!

Collage of comic-style illustrations. In a speech bubble it reads “Winner of the March Madness book genre bracket: comics! I came down to between history and comics, with one vote determining comics as the winner. Your vote matters! Thank you for playing!”. In another text bubble beneath, it reads “What are your favorite comics?”.

Accessibility Advocate Shoutouts

As mentioned above, we have been helping support the iSchool as they work towards more accessible class materials. We would like to celebrate those who have been stepping up to become Accessibility Advocates at the iSchool – whether they have been educating others about accessibility for years, or they’ve recently made the commitment to jump in and try their best, we think it’s important to recognize the effort and amazing impact that we can make as an iSchool community if we all do our part!

In March, we began spotlighting some of these advocates on a monthly basis. This is a great chance to recognize and uplift these efforts, to encourage one another as a community to keep striving, and to help students get to know our instructors a little better! Please check out our first shoutout from March, professor Steve Oberg, and keep an eye out for our next Advocate to be shared later in the week! Feel free to email us at ischool-support@illinois.edu to nominate any instructors and let us know their impact!

Check out the blog post here!

Black background with a spotlight, and a headshot of Steve Oberg in the center. It says “Steve Oberg” at the top and “March ’25” at the bottom.

Community Shelf Updates

As we shared last month, our GA Delia has created a wonderful community shelf with free items to share. It now has a lovely new Grateful Space shelf, where anyone can come and share something they are grateful for, a cute drawing, or anything else uplifting! Please feel free to come add to this positive community creation.

A shelf with a sign that reads “Grateful Space. This is a space to share things that make you happy on sticky notes, leave a doodle, and express your joy.” There are coloring pages, sticky note pads, and crayons on the shelf. Surrounding the sign are various sticky notes reading things like “I am grateful for movies”, “I am grateful for pasta”, “I’m grateful for my friends”, etc.

Help Desk Social Events

For this month’s social events for the Help Desk GAs, we went to two wonderful escape rooms at Champaign Urbana Adventures in Time and Space! In two teams we tackled the Forest of Fables and Rise of the Icarus escape rooms. Both teams made it out successfully (one team with only 30 seconds to spare!) and had a wonderful time!

Several Help Desk GAs & friends posing in front of a large storybook with various props from the escape room.

Several Help Desk GAs and friends posing with the spaceship set of their escape room (one of them is holding a rocket).

Ramadan Fast-Breaking

Here at the Help Desk, we are well-known for our free candy. At the suggestion of one of our GAs, the Help Desk has also decided to provide dates and water bottles in the evenings during the holy month of Ramadan for any iSchool friends who happened to be fasting. This is a traditional way of breaking one’s fast after the sun goes down during Ramadan. We always strive to be a welcoming space for all of our iSchool family, and we hope this was just one of many ways we are able to show that!

A water bottle, a bag of dates, and a sign that reads “Observing Ramadan? Please help yourself to complementary dates and water!” on the front of the Help Desk.

Job Search Updates

As they prepare to graduate very soon, our second-year GAs are all searching for jobs and trying to find out where they’ll end up next.

Audrey has had a couple of interviews and had another big interview this week. Wanheng has an all-day interview on May 2nd. Another GA has several interviews coming up, and shared this:

“The search process really takes long and the feeling of not being selected makes it longer and stressful. But I think the experience makes it worth it. I just will keep trying and trust God!”

We know they’ll all do an amazing job! Please join me in wishing them the best of luck! ❤️

New Graduate Assistants

Our Help Desk managers have interviewed and found 5 amazing new incoming students to hire as Graduate Assistants starting this Fall, to replace the fantastic GAs that we will be losing after graduation. We are so excited to welcome some new faces – stay tuned to find out more about them later and welcome them to the team.

Stormy Weather

So far, all of us at the Help Desk have been staying safe from the bad weather. We hope you are all staying safe and sound as well!

Welcome back, Ky!

Our beloved newest manager (Senior IT Specialist), Ky, has returned from parental leave and we are all so excited to have them back! They are glad to be back, and the new baby is doing well. Please enjoy a recent picture of their absolutely precious little ones.

Ky’s two-year-old child and 3-month old baby sitting on a couch together, looking precious.

Upcoming…

Help Desk Newsletter- February

Welcome to our NEW iSchool Help Desk monthly newsletter!! We will be using this to share updates about what we’ve been up. Whether you’re a current student, faculty, or staff; or an alumni or friend of the iSchool Help Desk and want to keep in-the-know about us, we’re glad to have you! You can expect updates about the major initiatives and projects we are working on, pictures and updates from our fun social events, and anything else up and coming at the iSchool Help Desk!

We’ve been keeping very busy this semester with lots of new projects. One of our largest projects has been to provide resources and support for the iSchool as the university begins working to meet new upcoming digital accessibility standards. You can learn more about how the U of I is preparing for digital accessibility compliance here. Updating all course materials to meet these standards by April of next year is a big undertaking, and we are working in many different ways to provide support throughout this process.

Our GAs have created, written, and led monthly workshops for faculty and Teaching Assistants about topics such as PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, and Canvas accessibility practices and tools. We have also offered drop-in hours where instructors can bring in any materials that need updating or questions and get one-on-one help with them, and will continue offering these regularly.

Blind Date With a Book

On Valentine’s Day, the Help Desk hosted a Blind Date with a Book event, which was a hit! Lots of students came by and were paired with a new, free book (or two) from our little free library, all wrapped up and decorated with adorable designs! We had so much fun meeting students and helping them make new connections.

Collage of photos of students checking out our shelf full of books that are wrapped in tissue paper with cute illustrated designs.

Bluesky!

Did you know that we are on Bluesky now? While we have not completely transitioned away from other social media platforms, we are excited to try out this new platform and make new connections there! You can follow us at @uiuchelpdesk.bsky.social! You can check out our recent series of posts to help you get to know all of us GAs a little better! Here’s an example:

Photo collage with an image of our GA Delia in the center. It reads “Meet Delia” at the top and “She likes soup and recommends reading *The Marvelous Invention of Hugo Cabret*” at the bottom.

Social Events

Every month, the iSchool Help Desk GAs have a social event together to have some fun and enjoy time together as a team! This month’s event was a mystical Fortune Telling Tea Party, complete with snacks, crafts, and some fun activities! Enjoy some photos from this below.

Photo collage of some of our GAs hanging out with a fortune telling cake, tarot cards, and a cup of tea.

Graduation

As graduation is swiftly approaching for about half of our GAs, our second-years are working hard on their job searches. Join us in wishing them all good luck in finding the right next steps in their journeys! We know they will all be doing amazing things in the future, and we will continue sharing any exciting updates as they come!

In this process, our second-year GAs have also been putting together a compilation of career resources, including successful application materials and other useful information that will help future Help Desk GAs in their career preparation.

Community Shelf

Another great example of one of our GAs working to make things better for other students is our new Community Shelf! This is located next to the Help Desk, and Delia has worked hard to put together free resources for any students to give and take. There will also be a beautiful new zine full of resources and information about the iSchool coming to the shelf soon, and a shelf for people to leave notes and writing/art projects to share! Come check it out next time you’re near the Help Desk.

Upcoming…

Thank you so much for reading this, and for your support! We are excited to be able to keep everyone updated on the amazing things happening at the Help Desk and in our community. Keep an eye out for next month’s newsletter, as we have many exciting new things coming up!

Tech Tip: Graduation Resources

Image congratulating new UIUC graduates and sharing a link to resources they can access after graduating.

As finals wrap up and the fall semester comes to an end, some of you are getting ready to graduate. With graduation comes a bunch of important questions, including ones like: will I lose access to my university account? If so, when? How do I save files linked to my Outlook email? My Box account? My Canvas courses?

Never fear! The Help Desk has a Knowledge Base article all about how long you keep your access to university accounts, as well as information about how to save important files and emails. If you still have more questions about graduation and what login information and tech services you can access, please reach out to us! The Help Desk is happy to help answer your questions and concerns. You can contact us at 217-244-4903 or ischool-support@illinois.edu. You can also visit us in-person at 614 E Daniel Street. We’re located on the 4th floor, and will be open for the summer from 9am-5pm Monday through Friday.

Tech Tip: Electronics Recycling Event

Electronics Recycling Event, Saturday, May 18th, 2024. Registration opens on April 1. Open to all those living in participating Champaign County communities. Visit ecycle.simplybook.me to learn more! Image of electronics against a blue background.

Do you have old electronics you need to get rid of? Good news! Champaign County is holding an electronics recycling event on May 18th, 2024. Registration for the event opens in just a few days on Monday, April 1st. They will accept a wide variety of electronics, including televisions, computers and laptops, phones and phone accessories, and more. More information about the event, its location, and what items they will accept is available on the booking page for the e-recycling event.

We’re Hiring!

The Help Desk is HIRING! We’re looking to hire GA’s for a 50% appointment for Fall 2024. Apply here!

Applications are due March 15th! We’d love to have your awesome self join Team Awesome!

Check out a video of the job description from our lovely supervisor Joseph!

Help Us Meet Your Technology Needs!

Have you ever lost your charger? Needed some headphones for a last-minute Zoom call? Wanted to try out a VR headset?

Fill out our survey to let us know what you’d like to see available for loan at the iSchool Help Desk!

Help Desk T-Shirts

Have you seen the Help Desk’s awesome new T-shirts and felt a little jealous that you’ll never own a T-shirt that will ever be just as awesome?
Today is your lucky day; we are selling these T-shirts starting at $13.50! They come in four colors: tan, light yellow, white, and pink! You can view the T-shirts online at campus ink.
On the fence about buying? Purchase a shirt! If we don’t get 24 orders, we will be unable to order shirts for anyone. Orders are due December 11th.

Earth Day Resources

In celebration of Earth Day, we’d like to take this opportunity to link you to a few resources in and around the C-U area of Illinois. Below are just a few places and services which help us all reduce our impact on the environment. This is by no means a comprehensive list, and with a little thought, we’re sure you can think of many other ways to support the environment.

Recycle batteries, medication, hearing aids, ink toner cartridges, and more at the Urbana Free Library.

battery deposit tubes

Donate to your old items to clothe and shoe bins around town. They’ll take things that store-fronts and non-profits might not. They do NOT have to be wearable, but they should be clean.
Many of the bins are sponsored by the GAIA movement, see more here: https://gaia-movement-usa.org/about-us/about-gaia-movement-usa

cloth and shoe donation bin

There are book bins around as well, sponsored by Discover Books. Better to donate than to throw away.
There are also little lending libraries around town to check out and the iSchool Help Desk’s own lending libraries near each desk location.
Learn more about Discover Books here: https://www.discoverbooks.com/

discover boks donation bin discover books donation bin discover books donation poster

Some other helpful links:

Where to take recycling in Urbana:
Look here for more details (there are lots of details): https://urbanaillinois.us/residents/recycling-program-u-cycle/where-do-i-take-it

Where to take recycling in Champaign
Look here for more details (there are a lot of details and places to take all kinds of materials): https://champaignil.gov/public-works/recycling/where-do-i-recycle-it/

There are all kinds of ways to get involved in keeping our collective home cleaner and healthier, from adopting a highway with friends, to planting a garden (pollinator and food gardens especially), biking, walking, or using public transport instead of driving, replacing inefficient electronics, and of course recycling when and where you can. The weather may not always be the best, but we encourage you to get outside to appreciate the natural world around you.
We’d also like to note what appears to be a lack of glass recycling in our area. Currently some curbside pick-up services in accept glass recyclables, but otherwise there does not seem to be any place which accepts glass items.